


Iridescence

by Milieu



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Crossover, Epistolary, F/M, Horror, Lovecraftian, Other, POV First Person, mentioned animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-13 10:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12982596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: A recollection of the strange meteorite which landed on Stardrop Farm, the events that followed, and how they changed the valley forever.





	Iridescence

To whom it may concern:

I hope that this report, if it can be called such, has come to your attention with the sort of urgency that it requires. I hope that you will hear a follow-up from me via personal post, if not delivered in person, very soon. I hope that you will treat what you are about to read with a suspension of disbelief if nothing more, and will not dismiss it as the lunatic ravings of some country bumpkin who got wild ideas in her head after seeing a space rock or two.

It is hardly the case that I'm uneducated, after all, and I'm certainly familiar with the sort of meteorites that have been uncovered from time to time in my home region of Stardew Valley. The specimen recovered from Stardrop Farm, and the events which followed, remain quite unlike anything I have ever experienced. ~~Indeed, I hope to never experience anything like them ever again once the metaphorical dust has settled.~~ I fully expect that none who read my account will be able to compare it to anything they themselves have known.

~~I hope that the kinds of things I am preparing to recount have never happened anywhere outside of the valley, and that they never will again. I can't begin to fathom the implications laid out by any alternative. I think that I would only make myself sick with dread if I tried.~~

I was born and raised in Stardew Valley, in a little place called Pelican Town. It's not much of a town now, but I can recall it being quite the center of activity in my early childhood. Much of that was thanks to the farm.

Stardrop Farm (which shares a namesake with the valley itself in the rare stardrop fruit)  ~~is~~ was a pillar of local economy for Pelican Town. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the commerce that the farm supported was absolutely vital to the town's wellbeing. Its original owner, a Mr. Ezra Gardner, passed on several years ago, and I can say with the confidence of someone who lived through the proceeding years that the loss of his farm's economic support was devastating.

Around four years ago, Ezra Gardner's granddaughter Hazel arrived in Pelican Town and took up residence on Stardrop Farm.

About Hazel personally, I can tell you only a little. She was a friendly face, but I didn't get to know her well before I left Pelican Town to pursue my master's degree at your own esteemed Miskatonic University. I know that she herself came from the nearby city of Zuzu prior to her move to the valley, and that she was some sort of office clerk or secretary in the employ of the Joja Corporation (who themselves recently vacated their operations in Stardew Valley, ~~in what I now consider to be a very wise move even if their reasons for doing so at the time were extremely frivolous~~ ). By all accounts, Hazel adjusted to farm life like a fish to water, as the saying goes. Certainly, she had it turning a profit just like her grandfather had within a few seasons. She took a lead role in the restoration of Pelican Town's community center, and she married a young man named Alex Mullner.

Alex was a lifelong resident of Pelican Town, as I was. Like Hazel, I didn't know him well, but I know that he had been a star athlete while in school, and that he had spent much of his time afterwards living with and caring for his grandparents, George and Evelyn Mullner. He'd had a troubled childhood, which is what eventually led to his grandparents becoming his sole caretakers; from what I understand, his father was  ~~an alcoholic~~   ~~unfit to be a father~~ not a part of his life from a young age, and his mother died of some illness when he was a teenager. From what I heard after the wedding (I was unable to attend due to my responsibilities in my master's program, but my family attended), Alex took his wife's name, moved in on the farm, and took to it just as well as Hazel had.

~~I had heard that they were planning on having a child, back before the strangeness began. I'm thankful that they didn't.~~

My father, Demetrius Moore, is a scientist much like myself. He instilled the love of knowledge in me ever since I was a child, and I had spent many years assisting him in his home lab before I ever saw a "true" chemistry lab such as those located on Miskatonic's campus. I know from his research that Stardew Valley has long been home to unique flora, fauna, and other natural phenomena.

One such phenomenon was the meteorite which landed on Stardrop Farm.

Unfortunately, I have only secondhand knowledge of the events which transpired immediately after its landing and discovery. My father is not an imaginative man, however, and given my experiences later on which tie into the meteorite's existence, I believe that his account was embellished little, if at all. The story goes as follows:

One night in mid-spring, nearly two years ago now, there was an explosion in the sky. Hazel and Alex Gardner were awoken in the night by the noise; it was loud enough to blow out one of the windows in the farmhouse, and its echoes were heard as far as the Calico Desert on the other side of the valley. They went outside to calm their animals; Stardrop Farm housed quite an array of livestock, and all had been thrown into a frenzy by the explosion. They noticed a smoky or misty quality to the air, but nothing tangible - perhaps there was nothing which we would consider physical there at all.

In the morning, they discovered the meteorite.

It had landed near the edge of the farmland, close to the small cave where my father had set up a research station to observe the growth of cave bats and mushrooms with Hazel's permission. I never saw it in its pristine state, but I have spent a significant amount of time studying the notes and photographs my father took upon examining it, and I can say without exaggeration that it was of a size unlike anything I'm aware of in recorded meteorite landings. My father's notes were very precise: the specimen measured 1.37 meters in diameter at its widest horizontal point, and was 1.52 meters tall at its center. It was not quite spherical in shape, composed of a dark, porous rock similar to basalt. Most remarkably, it was studded with numerous protrusions first assumed to be crystal, but which on closer inspection proved to be iridium, a semi-precious metal which occurs in abundance in the valley. All observed protrusions appeared intact, undamaged by the temperature, velocity, and force of impact of the meteorite's landing. Of its weight, we have only estimates; the combined efforts of several of Pelican Town's strong, able-bodied workers were not enough to budge it from its landing site.

My father contacted no other professionals about the remarkable specimen, nor any university or state-sponsored teams. He only called me, late in the afternoon after a day of marveling at its properties. Given how rare it is for him to openly express so much emotion or excitement, I took everything he said at face value - or at least, I believe that  _he_ very firmly believed in what he observed, and that is good enough for me to accept it as the truth.

As the meteorite could not be moved, my father had instead chipped off several sections of the rock which made up its main body and several of its crystalline protrusions. He confirmed that the protrusions were indeed iridium, but was unable to identify the main rock. As stated before, it was dark, porous, brittle enough that it came as surprise that the entire body of the meteorite had not cracked open upon making its landing, and unexpectedly dense; despite its porous nature, it would not float in water but instead immediately sank. The iridium, occurring in veins throughout the meteorite, appeared for all intents and purposes to be mundane, a near-perfect match to the ores which can be found throughout Stardew Valley.

It was only when viewed through infrared and ultraviolet spectrums of light that it became clear how truly remarkable the rock was.

This I do not repeat as hearsay; I observed it myself when I returned to Pelican Town and examined the remaining samples in my father's lab. In fantasy, science-fiction, and other genres of speculative fiction, authors have often attempted to give names and descriptions to colors which humans cannot see and indeed cannot imagine. I have seen such colors firsthand, and truly, I cannot describe them.  ~~I only wish that I still had the privilege of being unable to imagine them as well.~~  

In the days immediately following the meteorite's landing on Stardrop Farm, my father was almost delirious in the grip of a fervor for research. He obtained the Gardners' permission to set up a mobile research station around the meteorite, so that he wouldn't have to constantly move between his home lab and the farm, and so that he could make an effort to shield the specimen from any spring rains; he had noticed, upon returning to the sample of rock whose density he had tested in water, that it had begun to rapidly dissolve, and he didn't want to risk losing the bulk of the specimen in an unexpected downpour.

Throughout those days, before I was able to get time away from my studies long enough to return to Pelican Town, my father noted other things. The Gardners' dogs, Dusty and Pepita, had a particular dislike for the meteorite and the ground it had landed on. My father theorized that it bore some alien smell that they could detect and that humans could not, and it was this that deterred them from approaching it and caused their hackles to rise if approached by someone who had handled it. After all, it had come from the most foreign of all possible frontiers. It was not until later on that he realized that the fruit bats which had inhabited the nearby cave were slowly but surely dwindling in number. There was no evidence of an illness in the colony, nor any invasion from outside animals; the bats simply deserted the area, a few at a time.

The last few fruits and berries discarded by the bat colony, which I helped to collect after I arrived in the valley during my break, were oddly overripe, tender enough that they were liable to burst if handled with too much pressure. Their insides possessed a strange, sour smell which I was unable to identify with any fruit I had known, and there was something off about the coloration of the fruits' flesh.

The very final fruit specimen which the bats left was a stardrop. My father and I made note of it, and left it to the Gardners as we had with all the other non-anomalous fruit that the bats had left before. I believe that Hazel presented it to Alex as an anniversary gift, or perhaps it was the other way around. ~~I can vividly recall most everything about the curious events which followed the landing of the meteorite, but I can't quite dredge up all the details of the relationships and people of Pelican Town anymore. This, I very much regret.~~

So to summarize what I know so far: the meteorite landed in mid-spring, and was found to contain an abundance of iridium ore and curious physical properties. Animals abhorred it. Despite my father's best efforts, it was a wet spring which became a damp and muggy summer, and the meteorite slowly but surely eroded away even with the precautions he had taken.

It was late in the summer when the specimen finally crumbled and dissolved completely. All that was left of it were the samples my father had preserved in his lab. Townsfolk reported a strange, hazy mist hanging in the air over Stardrop Farm, not unlike that which the Gardners had reported on the night that the meteorite fell, for the next few days.

Around that same time, Hazel Gardner came calling at my family's home. She complained that the well on the farm had lately been providing water of an odd, somewhat unpleasant taste and which possessed an unusual iridescent sheen, and she was concerned that some sort of oil contamination had afflicted the groundwater. I accompanied her back to the farm and observed the water for myself, confirming that what she said was true, though the colors which floated on the water's surface did not seem to me to quite match up with the usual sort of color and pattern which I would associate with an oil slick. I took a sample of the water back to my father's lab for analysis, and advised Hazel to avoid drinking from the well and the taps until we had determined whether it was contaminated and in what way.

I would like to believe that, at least for a while, the Gardners took my advice. They were intelligent people and Hazel was well-traveled; they weren't the sort to regard science with suspicion and to dismiss its conclusions, especially after they had gone to the trouble of seeking help from me in the first place. Given what eventually happened, however, I must accept that they grew tired of the inconvenience of buying bottled freshwater when they had a perfectly serviceable well right in their backyard. I  _must_ accept that, because the alternative is that the effects of the meteorite had an even stronger and stranger grip on Stardrop Farm than even I would come to realize, and this alternative conclusion is supported by nothing concrete, nor do I wish to entertain it for long.

~~I have my doubts. I will always have my doubts. It is the curse of a scientifically-inclined mind and of the things that I have seen.~~

That year, Pelican Town was shocked by the abundance of iridium ore discovered in the depths of its mines. Never in the town's history had such a haul of the precious metal been made; it would not do to say even metaphorically that they had struck gold, for gold is already abundant in the mines and iridium is far rarer and more precious.

In the fall, not long before I returned to Miskatonic to resume my graduate work, Alex Gardner fell ill. I assisted Pelican Town's physician, Dr. Harvey Blackwood, in Alex's initial care; I had worked as a nurse under  ~~Harvey~~ Dr. Blackwood after completing my undergraduate work, and still offered my services during the times that I was back in Pelican Town, as he was the town's only doctor and had no formal help. Alex had reportedly been feeling weak and short of breath in the weeks prior to finally ending up in the clinic, and Dr. Blackwood returned a diagnosis of pneumonia, blaming it on the particularly damp year and Alex's constant working and exercising in the outdoors. He was prescribed an antibiotic and bed rest, and was sent on his way.

Afterwards, I called Dr. Blackwood's attention to the chest x-ray I had taken for Alex. The pocket of air consolidation which we had identified on the x-ray seemed to me to be of peculiar, strangely regular shape, and its coloring reminded me of something metallic, as though it were an artificial foreign object within the lung. This we eventually dismissed as an error created by the machine, thanks to its age. Alex had lived in Pelican Town all his life, and Dr. Blackwood had access to all his medical records; he had never had any metal implanted into his body for any reason.

Shortly after this, I returned to Arkham and to Miskatonic's campus and resumed my studies. The excitement over the meteorite had eventually faded, and nobody at the time connected it with anything else that had happened lately. I heard nothing further of any unusual incidents in Stardew Valley, until my mother, Robin Carter-Moore, called to inform me that my father had fallen ill with pneumonia. She reassured me during the call, telling me that Dr. Blackwood had given him a similar diagnosis to Alex Gardner, and that she was sure that both of them would be back to perfect health in no time. Her words did not have the intended effect; instead, she had inadvertently imparted to me that Alex had not recovered from his bout of illness as expected. Cautious probing on my part revealed that he had, in fact, worsened and was no longer able to help Hazel out around the farm as much as he had before. This my mother blamed on the chill and damp autumn weather, and she again reassured me, even laughing off my suggestion that the family take a vacation to some warmer place until my father recovered.

The only thing which prevented me from putting all the pieces together right at that moment was the confirmation that Hazel Gardner seemed as healthy as ever, if stressed due to her husband's illness and the year's poor harvest. For the first year since she had moved to Pelican Town, Stardrop Farm had failed to produce an abundant crop in any season, thanks in part to the unusually wet year and in part to the peculiar blight which had struck most of the crops that she had been able to harvest. The fruits had all ripened too quickly and were near-rotten by the time they would usually be sold. The vegetables were wilted and shriveled. Most carried an unpleasant sour or acrid taste, rendering them unpalatable, and all held a particularly off-putting sheen in the coloration of the skin and flesh of the fruits and vegetables. The animals, too, had been temperamental and were not producing as much as they usually did, probably thanks to being cooped up for more of the year than they were used to and because the Gardners had been forced to switch to a different source of feed than they were used to thanks to the poor crop condition. They ended up having to sell off some of the more high-maintenance animals, but this got them through the year.

~~For the whole of that winter, I was plagued with a vague, heavy worry. I pulled through, and so did Pelican Town, but the worst was yet to come.~~

I freely admit that what I did when I returned to Pelican Town for the annual Feast of the Winter Star was irrational. I do not put stock in superstition, and I do not particularly believe in intuition either. I was suspicious and, I admit, frightened. That is all, and all that I have to support what I chose to do is nothing more than anecdotal evidence which emerged after the fact.

I returned to Pelican Town. I attended the Feast of the Winter Star with my family. I pulled my brother, Sebastian, aside while my parents were distracted, and I asked him how things had been. ~~Sebastian and I were always somewhat estranged but he~~ He told me what I needed to know, and what I already suspected: things had not been good. My father was ill, and our mother was occupied with caring for him in between her work. Sebastian himself had taken a proactive role in seeing to my father's needs during his illness, and he admitted his concern to me.

There were other things, too; the farm still wasn't doing well. Alex had steadily deteriorated, and his grandparents' health also seemed to be failing, possibly due to the strain of Alex's illness and their frequent visits to the farm on top of their advanced age. The Gardners' dogs had broken loose from their pen one night and run off into the darkness, barking and frothing madly for no discernible reason, and they hadn't yet returned. People had begun seeing strange things around the farm at night after the dogs disappeared (by "people" I surmised that Sebastian meant his longtime friend and on-and-off girlfriend Abigail Lacroix, and I doubted Abigail's credibility as a source, but it was yet another small piece of unsettling news to add to the rest).

There was no clear explanation I could draw from what Sebastian told me. I still wasn't convinced that there  _was_ an explanation that could account for everything. It was possible that this had simply been a deeply unfortunate year for the town, and for the Gardners in particular. Though I do not believe very much in superstition, intuition, fate, magic, or anything like that, I had difficulty in chalking all of these happenings up to coincidence.

And so, I took action.

That night, several hours after my family had gone to bed, I snuck out of my room and into my father's lab. He had not worked in it for some time thanks to his illness, and the lab's contents were much as I remembered them being when I had last been at home. I located the samples he had saved from the meteorite. I took them from the house and into the town, and then out into the Cindersap Forest, which borders Pelican Town to the west. In the far southwestern part of the forest, there is a garbage dump and a locked grate which leads into the town's sewer.

I must confess that not all of the skills which I have developed throughout a lifetime of scientific curiosity have strictly kosher applications. Among other hands-on skills, I'm quite adept at picking locks.

I picked the lock on the sewer grate, took the samples within, and disposed of them inside the waste depository. Then I left, re-locked the gate, and returned home in the early hours of the morning. By the time my family woke, the fresh snow had covered all evidence of my nighttime transgression. The missing samples were not discovered until far later, after my father had recovered from his illness and by that point I believe he may have been as relieved as he was disappointed to find that they were gone.

As I have said, what I did was irrational. However, I also believe that what I did was right. I cannot be triumphant when I say this; I have only the knowledge of what happened afterwards to reassure me at all, and what happened is this:

My father did recover. Alex Gardner did not.

Alex died early in the spring. His grandparents had both passed away by midsummer, within a week of each other. I attended both funerals  ~~and I was selfishly relieved that it was not my father's funeral.~~

Just before I returned to Arkham, before I left Pelican Town for the penultimate time, Dr. Blackwood called me into his clinic. He had something curious to show me. Something concerning.

It was, perhaps, a violation of the oaths he had taken as a doctor, but I had long been Harvey's help and he was at a loss. He showed me the x-rays he had taken of Alex's lungs in the months and weeks leading up to his death.

What Harvey had observed on those x-rays, that which I also observed with my own eyes, was no machine error. What we had initially believed to be a concentration of air in one of his lungs, displaying an unusual shape and sheen thanks to outdated machinery, had grown. Its form was unmistakably crystalline.

Also unmistakable was the anomaly's striking resemblance to a cluster of iridium.

I will confess that I do not remember what Dr. Blackwood and I spoke of after he showed me this. I will confess that I cried and that he comforted me, and that I set out to return to Arkham two days early because I could no longer stand to be in my hometown with all of the questions which now haunted me.

Before I left, however, I went to Stardrop Farm one last time.

Though it was late summer, no crops had been planted that I could see. The trees and bushes bordering the field were shriveled and gray. I could hear the insistent, hungry lowing of cattle from the barn. I caught a stench of mingled feces and decay as I passed the chicken coop. The farmhouse door was standing open with no apparent regard for the insects which buzzed in and out. Though the weather was hot and very dry in contrast to the previous summer, I could see smoke of a particularly oily quality rising from the chimney. As I approached, I noted that the smoke's stench was also especially foul.

Hazel Gardner emerged from the farmhouse before I reached it, carrying a shovel. She had been healthy while her husband was ill, but she looked healthy no longer. Her skin was pallid, her face sunken and hollow, her hair brittle and unwashed. Her athletic frame had grown thin and almost frail. She wore no gloves, and I observed under her fingernails both dirt and something which looked worryingly like blood. Her eyes were very, very bright, in a way reminiscent of someone struck with fever.

She took notice of my presence and acknowledged me with a nod, but she did not approach or speak to me. Instead, she walked to the well around the side of the house, and she began to dig.

I cannot say why exactly I followed her or why I struck up a conversation. Our exchange was as follows:

"Hazel," I began, "what are you doing?"

She did not look up at me. "I'm going to get to what's down there."

"What  _is_ down there?"

Hazel made a vague gesture with one arm before she resumed digging. "I don't know what it is. I don't think it knows what we are either."

"Is it aware?"

"Maybe. Maybe."

"Maybe," I echoed. At this point, between what I had seen at Harvey's, the state of the farm and Hazel herself, and this bizarre conversation which I was not and still am not sure why I began or continued, I was feeling quite faint.

She nodded and continued digging around the edge of the well. A rock was dislodged from the well's rim and tumbled into the water below with a faint splash. I caught an acrid whiff of air and could have sworn that I saw a barely-visible vapor of indescribable color waft up.

"What are you burning?" I asked. I was quite struggling to ground myself by this point.

"The dogs."

Hazel spoke with a monotone much like a person suffering shock. In all likelihood, she was indeed in shock, but I could not bring myself to try to do anything for her. Even if I had been able to try, I sincerely doubt that I would have been successful.

"They were in the well," Hazel continued.

I believe that I only nodded to her in reply to this. She did not say anything else, and we were both silent for several minutes. After a while, I noticed that dusk was beginning to fall, and I was struck with a sudden and inexplicable dread at the thought of seeing the farm at night. I began to move away, and Hazel did not acknowledge my departure. Before I had fully moved out of sight, one final thing occurred to me, and I turned back.

I am sure that I was not the only one to ask why these horrible things had happened in Pelican Town and why they had befallen such good, hardworking people. I was, however, probably the only person to address such a question to Hazel.

It is a fact of psychology that one automatically assumes that the conditions in which one was raised are normal, and will not reconsider this unless presented with something contradictory. Until that late afternoon conversation, until I had that one last nagging thought, until I asked and Hazel answered, I had never questioned life in Stardew Valley very much at all. Now, I have quite an overwhelming amount of things to question indeed.

"Why is it here?"

Hazel finally paused in her digging and looked at me. She blinked once, slowly. Her voice came to me sounding very faint.

"It likes this place. It's been here lots of times before."

In hindsight, I believe that this was the point at which I began having a panic attack. Therefore, I cannot say for certain if what I believed Hazel said to me next was what I really heard. I can't think of any similar statement she may have made that I misheard.

"It knew my grandfather too."

When I next came to, I was already on the train to Arkham with my luggage beside me. That was not the end of the thoughts which plague me on the matter, the research I delved into which revealed some very unsettling things indeed about just how far outside of the norm some of the phenomena in Stardew Valley are, or my involvement with the valley itself, though the latter will soon hopefully come to an end.

~~Stardrops don't grow anywhere else in the Ferngill Republic. Why do they only grow here? Why do they have such strange effects on those who eat them?~~

~~Iridium is one of the rarest elements in the world, and yet it occurs in abundance within the valley and seems to be increasing every year. Is it truly increasing? A metal can't grow. Nobody ever seems to have found the amount of iridium in the valley anomalous, but then nobody from outside the valley has ever been called upon to check...~~

~~Things grow here which shouldn't grow, and in ways which shouldn't be possible. There are legends of races of people who came from the sky and who dug their way up from underground, and there have been strange sightings in the mines and the forest, strange noises heard at night and during rainstorms from the forest tower and from underground... Animals developing strange mutations, even animals and insects which are impervious to harm...~~

~~So many people complain about feeling trapped here but so few ever leave...~~

~~The meteorite dissolved and it soaked into the ground. It was in the well. It's in the water.~~

~~I wonder if Hazel is still out there, digging.~~

~~I am very afraid.~~

And thus ends my account of the events which happened in Pelican Town over the past two years, and the conclusions, scant though they are, which I have come to about said events. I do not know what, if anything, can be done. I hope to follow up this letter in person soon, circumstances allowing.

As for myself, I am going to return to Stardew Valley one last time. I will go to the Feast of the Winter Star as I did last year, and also like last year, I will take action. I know that my parents, my mother especially, will object, but my family is going to leave Pelican Town for the foreseeable future, if not for good. I have already made arrangements to rent a townhome here in Arkham. My parents' careers are in demand here, and I believe Sebastian will have a good chance at finding work as well. Regardless, I think that the change of scenery will do him some good.

I am going to encourage anyone else that I can to leave, but I have doubts about just how successful I will be. People aren't easily moved to abandon their home, even when disaster strikes. Harvey, I'm certain, will not leave so long as anyone else remains for him to care for. I can only hope that the amount of exposure that he had to the illness which afflicted Alex Gardner and my father won't have any detrimental effects.

I do apologize for the somewhat haphazard nature of this letter as well, and I hope that all of my handwriting is legible. I have edited it very hastily in an attempt to keep things as objective and concise as possible; accordingly, I ask that you ignore any passages which I have struck out.

I hope to be able to speak with your department at Miskatonic's sister campus in person soon in order to get a second opinion. I hope that I will be successful in what I plan to do in Pelican Town. I hope that I will not be too late to save at least a few, and I hope that I will be able to face the consequences bravely, with the knowledge that I have done the right thing.

I am a mechanical engineer by trade, but I have always had a knack for chemistry as well. There will be snow on the ground, but I am sure that the trees and bushes surrounding Stardrop Farm will be as dry and shriveled as they were the last time I was there, and that they will burn with little trouble. I do not know what will become of Hazel. I do not think that she can be saved if she refuses to leave. If that is the case, I believe that what I plan to do will be merciful.

Wish me luck.

 

 

Yours truly,

Maru Carter-Moore

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space", as is probably obvious. I gave the farmer's family the surname Gardner, after the unfortunate family which Lovecraft's story also centers on. 
> 
> In-game inspiration was taken from the meteorites which will sometimes spawn on the farm, from which you can mine iridium, and tied in with a bunch of the little oddities which make up perfectly innocuous gameplay but get sinister fast if you try to apply any real-life logic to it.
> 
> Mullner is the canonical surname for George and Evelyn, so I gave it to Alex as well with the reasoning that he and his mom went back to it after his dad left. Everyone else's names are made up since none get revealed in-game.


End file.
